The beautiful Elysée Palace is located at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées, although it is located in the downtown area, this stone building adhering to the European classics still maintains a sense of tranquility and solemnity. In the heat of the fighting, the German army was dozens of kilometers away, and it should have been deserted after the government brought to Bordeaux, but during the Battle of the Meat Grinder in Paris, in order to defend Paris with soldiers and people, President Poincaré resumed his office here - during the day, the tricolor flag on the roof of the building fluttered in the wind, and at night, the lights of the presidential palace illuminated the hearts of all French people.

On the night of November 4 in the Jesus calendar, the President was here to listen to the urgent report of Commander-in-Chief Petain, and the news made him extremely happy - the Chinese who had just joined the battle had miraculously broken through the German defense line, advanced sixteen kilometers and recovered his hometown of Baledik, what a great victory, after paying hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the first half of the year without any results, only provoking mutiny at the front and national discontent, France, no, it should be that all the Entente countries needed such a victory to boost morale.

Seeing that the president's full and slightly bald forehead began to glow in the light of electric lights, Commander-in-Chief Petain had a bitter word. Despite this incredible victory, the Chinese Expeditionary Force Command had nothing to do about it, they did not have enough reserves to assemble in the rear of the front, so that if a large number of German troops arrived at Baledik tomorrow, this brilliant victory would be short-lived, and the front would return to its former quagmire calm.

Thinking of this, Petain said: "Mr. President, according to the telegram of the Chinese command, they were not very prepared for this victory, and no one expected that the German defense line would be so weak and negligent. It was supposed to be defended by the strength of a division in Baledik, but in reality there was only one brigade. And the forward line of defense, because the Chinese are not prepared for artillery fire. So the Germans were caught off guard, and everyone was dumbfounded by such a result......"

"It's God bless us! My marshal, we need more than stunned, we need a complete victory - the recovery of Saint-Dizier and Baledic. President Calais stood up and waved his fist, and there was no better news for him, a hardliner on Germany, in this bitter early winter when there was no shortage of coal.

"But Chinese am ready to abandon the city...... "Petain directly stated Chinese's intentions.

"Nope! They can't do that! Poengaré said. Tell them that Baledik is my hometown. I'm going to go and hold them there until the final victory! ”

"With all due respect, Mr. President," said Clemenceau, the Tiger Prime Minister, who had been smoking a cigarette next to him, and Commander-in-Chief Petain told him the news first, while he dragged Petain to the Elysée Palace to meet the President. "The Chinese just picked up the jackpot ticket this time by shit luck, so they panicked and didn't know what to do, but now it's still too late, as long as the Chinese are determined to fight the Germans here." I think they're going to win in the end. However, at present the expeditionary force clearly did not have such determination, and they seemed to have a fear of the German army, in fact, in the present situation. The Chinese Army is not much worse than the Germans, much stronger than the Americans. We should ask for Chinese......"

"Mr. Prime Minister, do not forget that the Chinese Expeditionary Force has independent command of the campaign. And the battle was not discussed with us, and we had no way to ......" The debate over whether the expeditionary force should continue the war and hold on to Baledik began an hour ago. Pétain believed that although the Chinese did not want to and did not have the conditions to hold Baledik, they won a small battle. proved the combat effectiveness of the Chinese army, so this is a good thing;

But Prime Minister Clemenceau obviously disagrees with such a point of view, the turmoil and war weariness caused by the Nivelle offensive in the first half of the year is still continuing, and after the German submarine in the Mediterranean Sea was devastated, the Bora military port is recovering, and some nimble small submarines can still dexterously pass through the Otranto blockade line at night, sneak into the Mediterranean Sea to make trouble, and transportation is affected again, especially now that it is winter, the country is generally short of coal, and the price of a ton of coal has risen to 30 US dollars, which is a sky-high price! Imagine war-weary people in the cold winter without fuel, without enough food, and ...... nothing more valuable than a complete victory.

Before Petain could finish his words, he was interrupted by Clemenceau, who said: "Mr. President, it is said that the Chinese are most worried about his own official position, so they are very afraid of their superiors, and they are inferior to the evaluation of foreigners, if the ambassador to China asks the Chinese emperor or the Chinese premier to ask the Chinese expeditionary force to hold Baledik, and praises the Chinese army, I think that under domestic pressure, the Chinese army will have to mobilize troops to defend Baledik." ”

Clemenceau's proposal came as a surprise to Petain, and in his opinion the Chinese commander-in-chief, Lieutenant General Lin Wenqian, responded wisely, you should not fight a battle for which you were not prepared, this battle proved the combat effectiveness of the Chinese army, and it would be most cost-effective to put these combat-rich Chinese troops in a meaningless baledik, rather than throwing them into a major battle organized by the coalition forces.

Petain was about to refute when he thought about the year, but President Poincaré waved him back. He looked at Clemenceau: "The government generally does not interfere with the specific command of the army, because we trust the generals. Are you sure that's not the case with the Chinese? ”

"I'm pretty sure!" Clemenceau replied flatly, with a hint of disdain. "The Chinese admire the West very much, as long as we praise it, for example, when building railways, as long as we say to the Chinese workers: 'Only the Chinese can complete these works on time', even if they dislike the Westerners, they will curse us for using tricks and be sincerely happy when they hear this sentence - they think that whether this is true or false, at least they have the strength to be praised, which is many more than the Indians and Annamyans; The average worker, who hears such praise, will do the work without regard for his life.

It can be said that the Chinese are not practical, they care very much about the evaluation of the West, and at the same time, in order to prove themselves, they can pay an unimaginable price, this time the dispatch of troops to Europe is the most obvious example. To be exact, this is a very lowly bunch of people! As long as the aristocratic lords half-truthfully praise a few words. They will happily forget all their old hatreds, including those that have not been paid. ”

After China declared war on the Allies. The French people really cared about the country on the other side of the continent, but Clemenceau's knowledge of China was clearly before that. Ever since he met the Chinese rebel Sun fifteen years ago, he has always been concerned about this ancient people. In the previous decades, the country went from a disdain for foreign countries to a complete worship of everything foreign, a 180-degree turn that was unbelievable, and now that the country is revolutionary, Clemenceau believes that her habit of admiring foreign countries has not completely changed, and that under the praise of foreigners, the Chinese will shed their last drop of blood in order to prove themselves.

President Poincaré did not know much about the situation in China and had heard of Clemenceau's logic. He was quickly convinced, and he looked at his chosen prime minister with some excitement and asked, "So what should we do exactly?" ”

"Mr. President, you should personally send a telegram to the Chinese, hoping that their prime minister will support the expeditionary force to hold Baledik, and at the same time we should trumpet the victory of the Chinese in Baledik, whether in France or in China, and even in the whole world. If the Chinese's victory at Baledik were seen in the newspapers of the world, then they would have been kidnapped by public opinion and their own humble self-esteem. Shed blood for us unto the death in battle. Clemenceau said.

"Is that all?" It's so simple that it's hard for Poincaré to imagine.

"That's enough." Clemenceau said. "The Chinese love face more than profit, which is the opposite of the British."

"Well, I'll draw up a telegram myself......" President Poincaré has not finished speaking. Clemenceau took out a telegram: "Mr. President, I'm ready. ”

Unexpectedly, the prime minister came prepared, and Poincaré looked at the humble and sensual tone on the telegram. smiled and said, "Do you really want to say that?" I don't think it's quite appropriate. ”

"It's a perfect fit, Mr. President. The reader of this telegram is not the Chinese premier. Rather, it was the emperor and the people of China. Clemenceau said. In addition, the British will help us. They were also happy to see the Chinese hold on to Baledik and then provoke the Americans with this brilliant victory. ”

Hearing that the matter was also supported by the British, Poincaré immediately signed the telegram, which was then mobilized at the French embassy in China; Like the French, a telegram from the British wartime cabinet was sent to the new ambassador to China. Soon, on the morning of November 5, local time in Beijing, reporters from major newspapers in Beijing received an invitation letter from the new British ambassador, Sir Eston, to hold a press conference at the embassy at half past eight in the morning.

When Yang Rui got up, he knew about the war in France, but he didn't pay attention to it, he believed that Lin Wenqian would definitely be able to complete the task he had assigned. Moreover, it was already the end of October in the Russian calendar, and the revolution had not yet broken out, and it was only then that he re-examined Russian history and found that Lenin had disappeared under the curse of 'German spies' since the Bolsheviks had launched an unsuccessful revolution in July. The people believed that the Bolsheviks were German spies, but Yang Rui never believed it, because with the close relations between Russia and Europe, if they wanted to achieve the victory of the revolution, even in the chaotic period, the Bolsheviks had to rely on the help of foreign powers.

As for the stupid saying that 'the power of the people is infinite', it is the same as 'where there is oppression, there is resistance', which can only deceive the ignorant grass people. In Yang Rui's view, there are always foreign forces behind any revolution and subversion, and the revolution does not occur when the oppression is deepest, but always occurs when the situation of the grass people improves, or when the oppressors themselves are weak, such as the defeat of foreign wars, otherwise how can the grass people have the strength to resist the oppressors? Without the help of German power and internal chaos in Russia, the Bolsheviks could not have succeeded at all; As for the documents signed with the Germans, how could such a thing be taken seriously? The Bolsheviks took control of the state in order to unleash the proletarian revolution of the entire capitalist world, not to die for the capitalists of the whole world.

The birth of a behemoth in the northwest of China that is even more formidable than Tsarist Russia is both a bad thing and a good thing. The bad thing is that this behemoth is his neighbor, and he swallowed his land, and since then the frontier has been troubled; And the good thing is that the great powers fear and hate him far greater than themselves, after all, China is now only a country with a simple military industry and heavy industry system, although she has a lot of national capital factories, but capitalism is still very fragile, and many of these factories have state shares, the most important thing is that the lifetime employment system based on the Z theory is widely promoted, this kind of management style and management culture born in China, mature in Japan is more suitable for the current China than the American concept, Under this management model, the harmony between employers and employees led to the easing of labor tensions, and strikes and revolutions became almost impossible.

Land reform, control of public opinion, the abolition of unequal treaties, and the lifetime employment system were the four pillars of Yang Rui's confidence in resisting the invincible Marxism, but ironically, when he thought he was ready for the October Revolution to come sooner rather than later, it disappeared without a trace. After the failure of the July incident, Comrade Ulyyanov, who was slandered by the Provisional Government as a German spy, left St. Petersburg and hid somewhere in Finland until now. What went wrong? Yang Rui has been tracking.

After sending the foreigners away with an old saying that 'the general will be outside, the king's life will not be affected', on the twenty-sixth day of the ninth lunar month, that is, three days after the October Revolution in history, on November 10 of the Jesus calendar, Zhang Shi and Zhang Shi of the Intelligence Bureau came to the Yin'an Temple, and he said: "Sir, Kornilov has tracked down, he was killed two years ago for escaping from prison. ”

"Holy!!" Yang Rui was shocked and not only jumped up from the chair, but also spewed out the foul language of later generations, "He... He... How could he have been killed by our army? And the prison escape, it's rare that he was captured by our army three years ago, and then the prison escape was killed? ”

Looking at Yang Rui's incoherent speech, Zhang Shi was very strange, he did not understand the important role and historical role that history had given to Kornilov - after the failure of the Bolsheviks' half-hearted July uprising, the entire Russian public opinion condemned the uprising, believing that it was due to the influence of 'completely irresponsible Bolshevik agitation', but just when the bourgeoisie and socialists were glad that they had eliminated the uprising and defended democracy, the far-right activist, commander of the Petersburg Military District, and commander-in-chief of the Russian army who rose to prominence after the July uprising, Ravl . General Kornilov, feeling the weakness of the Provisional Government, was ready to launch a rebellion.

In order to resist the entry of Kornilov's army of Caucasian barbarians into Petersburg, the Provisional Government changed its attitude towards supporting the Bolshevik Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets, the workers and soldiers received tens of thousands of rifles from the arsenal of the Provisional Government, and several thousand Kronstadt sailors rushed to Petersburg to take control of the main communication routes to Petersburg together with the Workers' Red Guards.

It can be said that it was the rebellion of Kornilov that whitewashed the discredited Bolsheviks, and at the same time its backbone workers' and soldiers' Soviets and Kronstad's sailors acquired weapons and took control of the whole of Petersburg, which gave the Bolsheviks a chance to seize power again. Without the Kornilov rebellion as a springboard, the October Revolution could only be postponed indefinitely.

"Sir, this person is the commander of the Ninth Division in Siberia, he was captured in the Battle of Tieling during the Sino-Japanese War, and he has been trying to escape from prison since he was captured, and the second escape was discovered by Mongolian herdsmen through Mongolia, and he tried to resist when he was captured, and then he was killed." Zhang Shi said. "Is this person important?"

"Very important!" When Yang Rui heard the news, he sat on a chair, this Kalmyk, who was captured in World War I and then miraculously escaped from the Austro-Hungarian prisoner of war camp, was praised by the Tsar himself, actually died in Mongolia, is this the butterfly effect?

"And what should I do now, sir?" Zhang Shi saw that Yang Rui's expression changed greatly, and he was suddenly a little anxious. He felt that this Kornilov had a lot to do with the Russian Revolution, and that he might even be the Bolshevik's internal response. (To be continued......)